Rafal Olbinski began his adventure with illustration after graduation in the editorial department of the music magazine "Jazz Forum", where he was responsible for graphic design in the 1970s. In 1981 he traveled to Paris and then to New York. The trip, planned as a short trip, ended in thirty-three years of emigration after martial law was imposed in Poland. In the American market, Olbinski made his debut as an illustrator with a cover for Psychology Today. In the 1980s and 1990s, he collaborated with a number of American and European editors - designing covers and illustrations for "The New Yorker," "The New York Times," "Atlantic Monthly," "Newsweek" and "Time," among others.
The artist spoke about his work for "Newsweek" in an interview with Agata Czarnacka:
For almost two years I worked with "Newsweek" in an even slightly different capacity. Almost every week the art director called me asking me to come up with a cover for him. It was a fantastic school of conceptual illustration - later it turned out to be crucial in painting.
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Rafal Olbinski (Kielce 1945, lives in Warsaw) - studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology, where he received his diploma in 1969. Since his student years he has been involved in applied graphics and posters. He participated in many Polish and international exhibitions related to graphics and posters. He was the author of the graphic design of the magazine "Jazz Forum". In 1981, he left Poland and settled in New York where he cantinated poster art and also took up painting, press drawing and illustration. He made his debut in 1981 with a cover for Psychology Today magazine. He has been published in magazines such as Newsweek, Time, Business Week, The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, New Yorker and Omni. Since 1985, he has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has also designed posters for the New York City Opera for many years. In 1994 he was awarded the Paris Prize for the Most Memorable Poster of the Year (International Oscar for the World's Most Memorable Poster "Prix Savignac 1994"), and in 1995 he won the "New York - Capital of the World" poster competition. He is represented in collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Library of Congress Print Collection in Washington, D.C., the Wilanów Poster Museum and many other public and private collections around the world. He has been frequently visiting and exhibiting in Poland since the 1990s, and currently lives in Warsaw. His works are characterized by a specific type of imagery, which has earned him a reputation as a surrealist. Thanks to the surprising juxtapositions of picture elements, the combination of different plans and unusual scaling, as well as the narrative always present in Olbinski's works, his works enjoy unflagging interest and popularity.
